“Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know”?

Biography

Lady Caroline Lamb was born Caroline Ponsonby on November
13, 1785, in London. She was the daughter of Frederick Ponsonby,
Viscount Duncannon, and his attractive wife, Henrietta Elizabeth,
whose sister was Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Georgiana and
Henrietta were both “Spencer Girls,” which makes them
the ancestors of Princess Diana.

When Lord Duncannon inherited his father’s title and
became Earl Bessborough, Caroline received the honorific title
of “Lady,” which she kept until she died. She was a
member of the very highest of the immensely privileged aristocratic
class. She knew the Prince of Wales (later Prince Regent, still
later George IV). She was presented to Marie Antoinette and to
the queen of Italy. As a child she told Edward Gibbon
(the author of The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire) that his
face was so ugly it had frightened her puppy. Thus began the reputation
for outrageous behaviour which followed Caroline throughout life.
Headstrong and egalitarian in her social and political views, she
was unfortunately handicapped by her wealth, as her friend Lady
Morgan later commented. Caroline was born with no title. She
acquired her title upon her father’s becoming Earl of Bessborough
in 1793. When a Lady marries a commoner, she uses his family name.
Thus, Lady Caroline later married William Lamb and became Lady
Caroline Lamb. Lamb later inherited the title of Lord Melbourne,
but not until after his wife had died, otherwise we would speak
of “Lady Melbourne” rather than Lady Caroline
Lamb.

Little Caroline had hair that was reddish-blond. She had delicate
features, excellent teeth, and freckles across her cheeks and nose.
By age four she could draw a map of England freehand and had begun
to read. At five she spoke some French and Italian, and at six
she began to study music. At six and a half Caroline could speak
French “very tolerably” (according to her father) and
play a tune on the harpsichord. By the time she was seven she had
begun to read French and Italian. She was lithe, well-coordinated,
and even athletic. Yet, despite her accomplishments, Caroline seemed
infantile and elfin. She lisped, and her pronunciation was influenced
by her Aunt Georgiana’s household—a nasal drawl seasoned
with baby talk. If she had been born two centuries later, she would
have been sent to speech therapy.

Natural childhood desire for attention was exacerbated into
adult neurosis when Caroline’s mother fell seriously ill
with blood spitting and spasms. The seven year old girl reacted
badly to this and to the deaths of a young boy and her grandmother’s
beloved dog while in Italy, and worse when her mother fell in love
with Granville Leveson Gower, a handsome young officer. She
endured harsh punishment by her tutors for misbehaviour, but extreme
permissiveness at the hands of her mother and grandmother. A
fever almost killed her at this time. Caroline developed such nervous
and fretful behaviour that in adolescence she was sometimes sequestered
with a trusted governess. Nonetheless she had a traditional coming
out in Paris in 1802, shortly after the signing of the ill-fated
Treaty of Amiens. Though she avoided being shunted into a familial
backwater, it was a near thing.

Caroline became infatuated with William Lamb, second son of
Lord and Lady Melbourne. They married in 1805, despite her mother’s
and grandmother’s misgivings. After two hard miscarriages
Caroline produced an apparently healthy boy, Augustus, who unfortunately
soon showed symptoms of epilepsy and retardation. She and William
loved their child and each other, but they often fought. He
was an atheist who pronounced himself not a pillar of the church,
but a buttress who supported it “from the outside” for
the sake of domestic stability. Lady Caroline’s naïve
piety took a beating, and she began to ape the fashionable ennui
of her class. Her morals eroded, and she had a love affair
with the notorious Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster—got caught,
and embarrassed her mother-in-law by confessing to William, who
forgave her.

In March 1812 Caroline read an advance copy of Lord Byron’s
newly published Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, wrote to him,
and began a very public affair which nearly resulted in an elopement
in August. Lady Bessborough collapsed, but she and Lord Bessborough
dragged their daughter off to the family estates in Ireland to
forestall further bad behaviour. Caroline still believed Byron
would run off with her. She had at this time a sharper understanding
of the hypocrisy of Britain’s liberal “Whig” culture
than he, and she was prepared to leave England permanently. Byron
would do so eventually, but not yet. He wrote her a letter intended
finally to “snap the knot,” and Caroline suffered a
nervous breakdown. She celebrated Christmas 1812 by lighting
a bonfire and tossing replicas of Byron’s gifts and letters
onto it while local children recited her poem comparing Byron to
Guy Fawkes.

After this bitter break-up, she began a novel manuscript and
formed friendships with people close to Byron, like his publisher,
John Murray, and Isaac Nathan, the young Jew with whom Byron was
writing “Hebrew Melodies.” Byron married one
of William Lamb’s cousins, Anne Isabella Milbanke, and when
their marriage foundered, Caroline felt divided. She defended
Byron against public humiliation (he was accused of abuse and sodomy),
and yet tried to protect Lady Byron from losing custody of her
child. William’s family made a concerted effort to bring
about a separation and wrest custody of Augustus from Caroline.
To her credit (and William’s), Caroline had kept Augustus
in the household, giving him every chance to develop normally,
despite his frequent grand mal seizures.

In summer 1816, just after Byron departed England forever,
Caroline published her novel, Glenarvon, loosely based
on her affair with Byron. It was set in Ireland and took
as its background the bloody repression of the Irish uprising of
1798. It also satirized a number of familiar London households.
The book hit like a bombshell. She
was “cut” and shunned by virtually everyone. Her
in-laws found a doctor who diagnosed Caroline as “insane.” Under
extreme pressure, William came close to a separation, then demurred. It
seems clear now that he supported his wife’s writing. Caroline
struggled on for the next eight years, in and out of hot water
with her relatives. She published two satires of Byron’s
Don Juan: A New Canto (1819) and Gordon: A
Tale (1821). She
wrote two more novels. Graham Hamilton (1822) tells the
story of a young man who sacrifices his moral code and ends an
outcast who emigrates to America. Her last novel, Ada
Reis (1823) is
a phantasmagoria of witchcraft and wizardry in which the title
character makes a deal with satanic forces and pays the ultimate
price. Set in climes as disparate as Italy and Peru, the
novel ends in hell, where sinners have been given one last chance
at redemption but are too crime-besotted to save themselves.
Lady Caroline also wrote song lyrics which were set to music and
sold by Isaac Nathan.

The news of Byron’s death in 1824 crushed Caroline. She
accidentally encountered his funeral procession as it passed through
the neighbourhood of Welwyn, near Brocket Hall and the Melbourne
family estates. Worse, she read for the first time a poem
Byron had written years before in frustration at her antics that
cursed her with “remorse and shame.” Though she exaggerated
the impact of these events upon her psyche, the record shows that
she produced no significant writing after this date. She
worked at a wide variety of novel projects and even published a
women’s pocket-diary—a sort of calendar and receipt-book
rolled together with inspirational quotations from famous writers.
She also formed literary friendships with William Godwin (father
of Mary Shelley), the Italian novelist Ugo Foscolo, and several
liberal (or “Bluestocking”) writers like Lady Morgan
and Amelia Opie.

Caroline’s husband finally agreed to a separation from
her, then reneged again, allowing her to return to live quietly
at Brocket Hall, her favourite place. Her health had declined
under the abuse of alcohol and laudanum (liquid opium). She
began to retain water as her internal organs gradually deteriorated. By
1827, she was an invalid under the care of a full-time physician. William
had been given the post of Secretary for Ireland, and was away
when she entered her final days. He made a perilous crossing
of the channel and was at her side when she expired on January
25, 1828. William, who had stuck with her in spite of everything,
wrote that he felt “a sort of impossibility of believing
that I shall never see her countenance or hear her voice again” (see
Philip Ziegler, Melbourne: A Biography 105). She died before
William’s father, and therefore never became “Lady
Melbourne,” nor saw him rise to become Prime Minister under
Queen Victoria. Her son Augustus lived a full life, despite
his handicaps. In November 1836, William (now Lord Melbourne)
was engaged in paperwork at his desk while twenty-nine-year-old
Augustus lay upon the sofa nearby. He had appeared to be
asleep, but suddenly spoke in a quiet voice to his father: “I
wish you would give me some franks [postage stamps] that I may
write and thank people who have been kind in their inquiries.” In
a few hours he was dead. William died in 1848.